Day 3, 8 May - Strasbourg

Today was generally a transit day from Lindau to Freiburg to Colmar, and up to Strasbourg. The weather started off promising enough, with a fair amount of blue sky, but it quickly turned sour and rained for a large portion of the trip up to Strasbourg. It’s too bad, really, since the scenery going through the southern end of the black forest looked to be stunning and would have made for some fine landscape photography. Lunch was taken at a small bakery just outside of Freiburg where we had some wonderful sandwiches; mine with prosciutto, cheese, and cucumber, and Angela’s with Mozzarella and tomatoes. One interesting thing we did see on the way up from Colmar to Strasbourg was a miniature version of the Statue of Liberty. I think that the artist that sculpted her was from around here.

After arriving in Strasbourg at the Sofitel Strasbourg around 3:45pm or so, we set out for a bit of an orientation walk around the old town and the area known as “Petit France.” One thing we noticed was that all of the shops and stores were closed. We were very puzzled by this; as today is just a Tuesday, unless it’s some weird French thing that all stores will be closed on the 2nd Tuesday of the month or whatever.

During our walk, we stopped at the Cathedral Notre Dame de Strasbourg. It’s a magnificent Gothic cathedral made from the pink limestone that is common in this area. The hue of the stone really gives the building a unique countenance. Otherwise, it’s your garden variety Gothic church with one notable exception: there is only one spire. After a quick run-through of the church, we went in search of “Petit France,” a small area of Strasbourg in the southwest of the old town. This area is known for its restaurants and quaint charm. It certainly didn’t disappoint in that regard. After a couple hours of strolling through the rabbit-warren of tiny streets and alleys, we decided to try to find a place for dinner. Not feeling super-adventurous, and noticing many greek and Turkish restaurants, we settled on a place that looked to have good “Doner” sandwiches. We had a wonderful meal and didn’t require a single word of English to order, pay, and thank the proprietor.
After dinner, it looked like the weather might finally be breaking in our favor; our stroll back to the hotel was very pleasant. My initial impression of Strasbourg (at least the old town) is German cleanliness and architecture meets French eccentricity.

Aside: As part of our preparation for this trip, I’ve become a little more familiar with iTunes and more of the iTunes store offerings. We had gotten some recommendations for that TV series “Heroes” so I decided to purchase a season pass of it from the iTunes store. When we got back from dinner, we set out to watch a couple episodes of the show to see if we like it. Man, it’s excellent. I think we are hooked, and we’ve only seen the first two.

Hopefully tomorrow will bring some better weather. If so, we will take one of our day trips to either the “Route du Vin” or west to Lorraine.